On this edition of Honourable Menschen, The CJN Daily‘s tribute to recently passed pillars of the Jewish community, we’re remembering people from across the country who left their mark on Canadian Jewish life.
Dianne Kipnes was a clinical psychologist and philanthropist in Edmonton who, together with her husband, Irving, fought to find and fund better treatment for people with cancer-related conditions. Sandy Keshen was the long-serving executive director of Toronto’s Reena organization, founded to help her own daughter—and other people with disabilities—find facilities and inclusion within the community. Michael Mostyn, the former CEO of B’nai Brith Canada, was a lawyer who revitalized the Jewish advocacy organization to fight antisemitism on a national stage, while also assisting seniors, youth and the poor. Lou Hoffer was a Holocaust survivor from Transnistria, in Romania, who became a tireless advocate for the victims of the Nazis murdered in that part of Europe. And Stanley Diamond, a genealogy expert from Montreal, embarked on a quest to learn more about his family’s genetic blood disease, Beta thalassemia, and wound up helping thousands of Jewish people discover European roots—including Douglas Emhoff, Gwyneth Paltrow and Alan Dershowitz.
To share these stories, we’re joined by The CJN’s obituary writer, Heather Ringel, and also by Lila Sarick, The CJN’s News editor.
Transcript
Transcripts are AI-generated and may contain errors.
Ellin Bessner: I’m Ellin Bessner. And this is what Jewish Canada sounds like for Wednesday, March 19, 2025.
Welcome to The CJN Daily, a podcast of the Canadian Jewish News, made possible in part thanks to the generous support of the Ira Gluskin and Maxine Granovsky Gleskin Charitable Foundation.
On this second “Honourable Menschen” episode of 2025, we pay tribute to prominent Jewish Canadians who’ve recently passed away. I’m proud to shine the spotlight on five Canadian leaders hailing from four provinces—Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario, and Quebec—who’ve passed away in recent months and left behind important legacies and contributions to the Canadian Jewish community but also to the wider world.
Many of you listeners might be aware of our coverage of the death of Michael Mostyn, the most recent CEO of B’nai Brith Canada. He died on February 4th of brain cancer. He was a Toronto lawyer who revitalized the advocacy organization to fight antisemitism on the national stage while also helping seniors, the youth, and the poor.
From Edmonton, we profile Dianne Kipnes, a clinical psychologist and philanthropist who, together with her husband Irving, were cancer survivors who fought to fund and find better treatment for people with cancer-related conditions.
Toronto’s Sandy Keshen was the Executive Director of the Reena Foundation, an organization she helped create so her own daughter and other persons with disabilities could find facilities and inclusion in the community.
Lou Hoffer was a Holocaust survivor from the less well-known area of Transnistria in Romania. He came to Canada after the war and settled in Western Canada, then moved to Toronto in later years to be closer to his children, which is when he became a tireless advocate for the victims of the Nazis murdered in that part of Europe.
We also profile Stanley Diamond, a Montreal genealogy expert whose quest to learn more about his family’s genetic blood disease helped so many Jewish people find their lost European relatives after the Holocaust, including Douglas Emhoff, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Alan Dershowitz.
Heather Ringel has written the obituaries for many of our Honourable Menschen and women. She joins me now along with the CJN’s news editor, Lila Sarick, who covered Michael Mostyn’s passing. Hello to both of you.
Heather Ringel: Thank you. Nice to be here.
Lila Sarick: Thank you for having us.
Ellin Bessner: We’d like to start off probably with the most prominent national leader, well known not just in Toronto but across the country and in Ottawa for his advocacy work, and that is Michael Mostyn.
Ellin Bessner: Here’s Michael Mostyn speaking shortly after October 7, at a community solidarity evening in Toronto.
Michael Mostyn: We can no longer allow for incitement here in this country. We see hate rallies that are taking place on city streets, calls for the boycotts once again of Jewish businesses. Students in law schools, justifying acts of evil terror. That cannot be. This is a country of the rule of law. And while we might be a small Jewish community, we are not alone. And you should not be afraid.
Ellin Bessner: Lila, you covered Michael Mostyn for many decades. He was a community advocate, political hopeful, and most recently CEO of B’nai Brith Canada. Usually, when Heather and I talk about Honourable Menschen, they’ve all led such long, full lives. Many of them pass away in their 90s. Michael Mostyn’s death was much different.
Lila Sarick: Michael was the CEO of B’nai Brith Canada and he died very sadly at the age of 50, leaving behind two teenage kids who spoke beautifully at his funeral. A year ago, he thought he had COVID, went to the hospital for COVID, and they found out that he had cancer. He was ill for about a year and then passed away.
Ellin Bessner: You were watching the funeral, and it was an overflow crowd. Which prominent people were there that you’d like to list a little bit?
Lila Sarick: Michael Levitt was there. Michael was the MP for York Centre. The two of them met because Michael Mostyn was campaigning for the Conservatives in the riding over a number of years. Although Michael Levitt was the Liberal MP, they became good friends despite being on opposite sides of the political table. They would go on walks together and talk together. James Pasternak, who’s the city councillor for the area, was also there. He spoke about how he had worked with Michael Mostyn quite extensively, addressing a lot of antisemitism and other issues in the riding.
Ellin Bessner: Can you sort of give us a little bit of his career background before he became the head of B’nai Brith Canada?
Lila Sarick: He was a Toronto kid, born and raised. He went to law school and worked in his father’s law firm with his father and brother. He left to work at B’nai Brith, then ran a high-tech firm, but eventually returned to B’nai B’rith as the CEO in 2014. That was where he worked the longest and had the biggest impact.
Ellin Bessner: Many might not know that he often ran for the Conservatives in both provincial and federal politics, losing to Ken Dryden. Is that right?
Lila Sarick: That’s right. Ken Dryden was the Liberal MP. Yes, he ran against Ken.
Ellin Bessner: You can’t beat a goalie for the Montreal Canadiens! Like, 6’2″! You said 2014, and listeners may not remember that far back, but I recall he took over B’nai Brith from Frank Dimant, who left it in a financial mess and in need of a complete overhaul. What did Michael Mostyn successfully do to revitalize B’nai Brith Canada?
Lila Sarick: One thing he did was sell their headquarters, which was mortgaged up to the eyeballs. They also had an Alzheimer’s care facility that was half full, and they sold it. Their newspaper, first The Covenant, then The Jewish Tribune, was losing money and also closed. Michael Mostyn said, “Let’s concentrate on what we do well,” like advocacy work. During his tenure, they became much more active in the antisemitism advocacy field, focusing energies there rather than on loss-incurring ventures. He brought a fresh perspective and left a mark on the organization.
Ellin Bessner: Their antisemitism audit has become a benchmark in recent years, showing the state of antisemitism. While not everyone believes all its findings are antisemitism, would you say it’s one of their main achievements under him?
Lila Sarick: Absolutely. When people think of B’nai Brith, that’s one of the key things that comes to mind. They held a press conference in Ottawa for this report launch, covered by CPAC. Politicians from all parties attended to discuss its findings. It was a prominent feature and marked an achievement under his leadership. And Michael Levitt, in fact, spoke about how there was respect from all political parties for B’nai Brith when they came to present this.
Ellin Bessner: Yeah. And a lot of people spoke about his quiet way, his low-key way. I remember seeing him every year at the Israeli Consulate’s Hanukkah party where he would be talking and schmoozing with everybody, but very quietly. He won so many awards. Even in the last few weeks of his life, many of you may have seen this. He won the King Charles III Coronation Medal in his hospital bed. Melissa Lantsman, the deputy Conservative leader, made sure to award it to him in person because she thought that it would mean so much to him. I thought that it was very touching and poignant.
Lila Sarick: Absolutely. His parents spoke at the funeral, and you could just tell how proud they were of him and everything that he had achieved.
Ellin Bessner: I’m going to bring Heather back in now as we talk about some of our other Honourable Menschen. We’ve been trying to do a profile of Stanley Diamond for several months. He passed away in Montreal. Stanley Diamond, if you are into genealogy or Jewish roots or that TV show, “Who Do You Think You Are?” on PBS, all those things—Stanley Diamond’s fingerprints are all over this. Not just in Canada, but around the world.
Heather Ringel: Stanley Diamond. I spoke with the acting executive director at Jewish Records Indexing Poland, which is the organization he founded—a humongous genealogy organization, the largest special interest genealogy group where they hold 6.4 million records that are available. But it isn’t about little old ladies trying to figure out if they’re related to George Washington. It was everything from trying to figure out family DNA diseases and things like that, to helping people who were in some danger in countries that they were in, whether it was Ukraine or Poland, and needed to establish their roots so that they could have citizenship for marriages. They were helping out to prove that people were Jewish, as well as a lot of work with Holocaust connections to bring those people together. His overarching goal was really about Jewish continuity. As an aside, he was a Harvard MBA who started this because in his own family, there was a genetic issue, and he wanted to do some research into his past to see how he could help.
Ellin Bessner: You were mentioning the 6.5 million records. He was executive director of this site: Jewish Records Indexing – Poland.
I want to let you hear Stanley Diamond speaking in his own words in a documentary about him that aired on Global Television, to give you some idea of the scope of the genealogical database he helped create.
Stanley Diamond: JRI Poland is a massive Jewish vital Records indexing project.
We’ve indexed more than 2.2 million records so that you and I and everyone else interested in their Polish roots can go to the Internet, put in their town name, put in their family name up comes a list.
All the records for their town to start them off in their research they understand the need of Jewish people to find their families to find their family connection to learn who might have died in the Holocaust, to learn who may have survived.
Ellin Bessner: We can put the link in our show notes. He founded the International Institute of Jewish Genealogy in Jerusalem. He was a board member of Jewish Gen, I use this site all the time; it’s called JewishGen.org to look for burials when I’m doing interesting projects about trying to find people. For those of you who are into this, many of you may be rolling your eyes and going, “I’m not into Jewish history.” But for those of us who are, he was really the guru. I want to ask Lila now if you knew Stanley Diamond, and maybe you have an anecdote too.
Lila Sarick: I wrote a story quite a number of years ago for The CJN about how younger people were getting interested in Jewish genealogy and why that was. So, of course, I had to introduce Stanley Diamond because he is the guru. So I’m chatting with him, and he says, “Well, where’s your family from?” I tell him the name of the town that my dad’s family was from. He says, “Oh, well, this is how you spell it,” because it’s one of these places that could be spelled many different ways. He said, “Let me look it up for you. Let me help you out. I can do all this research for you.” He was just so generous with his time and so eager and passionate about it that even though I was just interviewing him for a story, he also had to know all about where my family’s roots are. Like many Jewish people in Toronto, our family’s roots are in Poland. It just made such an impression on me.
Ellin Bessner: That was how he helped everybody. He helped me too, in my many research projects, as well as finding a long-lost Bessner great-aunt, Bella Bessner Brodeur, where she’s buried, but also finding out how it all happened.
I want to talk about researching places in Europe where, you know, you don’t know how you spell them. I think this is an important time to talk about Lou Hoffer. You mentioned Poland is where a lot of Toronto Jewish survivors came from. But Heather, Lou Hoffer was a Transnistria survivor. That is a very important but lesser-known kind of story of the Holocaust, and I really want to hear more about how he became the spokesperson in Canada for the Transnistria survivors.
The late Lou Hoffer was a spellbinding Holocaust educator. Here he is speaking in 2018 to students at Toronto’s Crestwood Academy’s Oral History Project.
Lou Hoffer: So now,, come October, end of September, those of us that live in Vishnitz, in the city, they are giving us the same orders: 24 hours to the railroad station. Take along some clothes that you can carry and some food, then we did. And we sent out, we were sent out at the same to Transnistria, only we, most of us, were sent into the Romanian territory.
Ellin Bessner: So tell us a bit about Lou Hoffer.
Heather Ringel: So Lou, Lou died on January 10th. He was 97. He was an educator in Toronto with the Holocaust Centre. He came from Romania. He was from a small village called Vishnitz.
At the end of 1941, Lou Hoffer was deported along with his father, his mother, and his brother. They were being sent to this region of Transnistria, which was also known as the “death trap,” because the Romanians were kind of cheap when it came to shooting people and using all kinds of means of getting rid of them. Instead, they just starved them and froze them, not providing them with shelter or accommodation. That was what they did with them.
On the way to Transnistria, they stopped in a town called Ataki on the other side of the Dniester River. It’s Transnistria because it’s across the Dniester. They were living for a couple of days in households that had been abandoned by Jews. There were messages on the walls that said, “We are being killed. If you survive, tell the world what happened to us. Say Kaddish for us. Never forget us.” That really made an impact on him.
They had some skills in terms of trading with the local Ukrainian population for potatoes and for minor things. The family survived by a miracle. He ended up coming to Canada, to Saskatchewan, I believe, and went into farming. He stayed there until 2003. His children, of course, ended up in Toronto, and he came to Toronto. That was when he became much more involved in Holocaust education and in the Transnistria Survivors Association, which really wanted to bring to the attention of politicians, especially in Romania, that Romania had had a hand in getting rid of Jews, and they really hadn’t taken any responsibility for it. This association in general tried to move that up on their agenda. He was known as an exceptional speaker, especially with younger kids, where he really would set the picture of what had happened. It is a little different story from a survivor. It’s not what everyone thinks they’re going to hear.
Ellin Bessner: So what struck me about him is that he didn’t talk about his experiences until 2003. Only then, so many years later after the Holocaust, was he able to discuss what had happened to him. You mentioned that when they got to this small town, the people said, “Remember us, tell our stories, say Kaddish.” He and his wife planted, I think, a thousand trees in a grove in Israel in memory of his parents and the Transnistria Survivors Association. He said, “Our job as survivors was fulfilled 100%. Our stories, our legacies will be around for a thousand years. The world isn’t going to forget.” Your obituary in The CJN and our little podcast is part of that. I really like that. Thank you for writing it.
Speaking of Holocaust survivors, Sandy Keshen, a giant in the field of inclusion for adults and young people with disabilities, who died in Toronto in January. She, too, was a survivor. Tell us how she survived and how she got to Canada.
Heather Ringel: Exactly. It’s interesting because you don’t—I didn’t think of her as a survivor, but her son, Bryan, mentioned, you know, was very important. He heard of her background— not that she talked about it—but she was born in Poland in 1938. Her nickname was Sabina. Her family, she and her mother and father, escaped the Nazis and went to Russia. Her father joined the Russian army or was conscripted into the Russian army, but he was killed in 1942 in the Battle of Stalingrad. Then they came to Canada with her stepfather and his daughter, Rose, who was around the same age as her. And then her life began in Toronto.
Ellin Bessner: Tell us a bit about why she started in the field of disability. What motivated her to spend, what is it, 41 years as executive director of the Reena Foundation?
Ellin Bessner: How did this all happen?
Heather Ringel: Yes, she had two children and her daughter had a disability, somewhat of a disability, and she saw that her daughter didn’t have the same opportunities as her son, Bryan, did. She really felt that this was wrong and really spurred her into action with an organization that focused on children with learning disabilities and became aware that there was a real lack of services in Toronto.
This was the early 1970s, and at the time the Ontario government had made a decision, thank heavens, to start to move people with severe disabilities out of institutions and into more normal settings so that they could be more independent. It was quite horrifying and primitive to think that they were institutionalized before that. Rabbi Kelman at Beth Emeth also, he had a couple of congregations, realized there was a need in Toronto to help Jewish families. That was how Reena started. He called on Sandy Keshen, and she was happy to jump in and help lead the organization. In the beginning, I think one of the interesting issues was they needed to find a group home. So this was in 1974, and there was a home on Luverne Avenue that they wanted to turn into a group home, and I believe that’s in Bathurst Manor. The neighbours were not happy about this, and Sandy went door to door advocating and explaining who would be going in, and it was going to be a Jewish group home and how necessary it was. She ended up convincing them, turning the neighbourhood around so they would embrace the group home. She was also very political and ended up that North York City Council established a ruling that allowed the city to open one group home per neighborhood. She really made a tremendous impact.
Ellin Bessner: What does the name Reena mean?
Heather Ringel: Reena means joy, and I think that was an idea of Rabbi Kelman’s. At their 50th birthday, Rabbi Kelman’s son, Rabbi Jay Kelman, had said that his father had said, you know, that although the people who were with Reena wouldn’t have hope in the classic sense that neurotypical people do, it doesn’t mean they can’t have lots of joy and happiness. So they named it Rena.
Ellin Bessner: I think that’s beautiful. So Sandy ran Reena for 41 years, and then another Keshen took over. I mean, she had big shoes to fill, but her son took the reins.
Heather Ringel: After she stepped down, 41 years, and Bryan Keshen, who was a big, you know, had already made a big mark in the Jewish community working for UJA and other organizations. I mean, it was Kismet, you know. He stepped into his mother’s shoes there, and he’s running the organization and bringing new ideas and just an amazing confluence of events and of people. It’s fantastic.
Ellin Bessner: Now Bryan Keshen was asked a couple of years ago for Reena’s 50th anniversary to reflect on his mother’s devotion to that organization.
Bryan Keshen: It was a 24/7. Someone said I would have to make an appointment to see her. That’s not the case. She was always present and available and there, but she was mostly focused on her work and her passion.
Ellin Bessner: And finally, of course, we can’t end without talking about another famous, respected, and beloved philanthropist and also community builder in Edmonton, Dianne Kipnes. Dianne Kipnes and her husband Irv, I would say, changed the face of the Alberta health system, Edmonton’s cultural system. I’m really interested in how she, who was born Dianne Roberta McFarlane, became Dianne Kipnes and how she joined the Jewish community and then started transforming it. Tell us about Dianne Kipnes, who died Dec. 26 at the age of 81.
Heather Ringel: Her background was in psychology and social work, and she had originally met her husband Irv in 1977 in Montreal. He was on his way back with his first wife from a trip to Israel. She was there with her husband having dinner, and they had a mutual friend. So they met in 1977, and then life went on, and both of them ended up being divorced. Dianne ended up in Edmonton, and she reconnected with Irv, and they got married. From then on, the couple just embraced, you know, charities and healthcare, the arts, education, a Jewish community.
I know that she was really seen as quiet, reserved, elegant, graceful. She brought such passion to, firstly, as you mentioned, the healthcare area. She was diagnosed in the early 2000s with lymphedema in her legs after she had been treated for cancer. She really brought a focus to that condition because it was really something. As she said, it was a despairing thing. It was awful to have this illness. She said the antidote to despair is action. They started a lymphatic disorder chair at the University of Alberta Hospital. They were very active in that.
Ellin Bessner: Here’s Dianne Kipnes. She was speaking in 2018 when she and her husband Irving made a $10 million donation to the University Hospital Foundation to advance research and patient care at the Northern Alberta Urology Center, which was renamed in their honour.
Dianne Kipnes: Irv had prostate cancer. I had cervical cancer. We’re both very fortunate. This was, Irv was in 2000 and mine was in 2004, so we’ve survived that, and I think there’s a lot of research that can be done. Research is often one of the things that people don’t think to support. It’s always been really, really important to us, and we have researchers here. We have world-class researchers.
Heather Ringel:
And as you also mentioned, her love of the arts. They said the Edmonton Ballet probably wouldn’t have existed without their help. They had an annual gala for the Edmonton Opera, and it really put the city on the map. It was glitzy, it was beautiful. And actually this year, they had named it in her, done it in her honour, and going forward, I believe, it’s the Dianne Kipnes Valentine’s Gala for the Edmonton Opera. Her passion for Israel—I mean, they were very big lifetime donors with UJA. They gave money to Jews in Ukraine when war broke out there, and just active in everything.
Ellin Bessner: And she converted and joined the Jewish community to marry Irv, did she not? You said. Yeah, I didn’t ask about it, but I did hint at it at the beginning. So for 35 years they were married, and their foundation has been one of the most important philanthropy funnels of funding and support to Edmonton, as you mentioned, and Israel as well. You mentioned lymphedema. I just want to know in case our listeners might not know, she had cervical cancer from what I read. Then later on, after surgery, whatever this is, swelling and pain in the legs called lymphedema, and it affects more than a million Canadians. My late mother-in-law had it too. It was horrible to live with, and all they did from those days was massage and a little compression therapy, and that was then. That’s all patients could get. So it’s a really, really important initiative. She said she always acted as the guinea pig for any of these projects that they were hoping to do because she felt that she needed to take this on because nobody else was, right?
Heather Ringel: When she was diagnosed with this back in 2000, she said they had just—I believe they had been in Europe. I think they’d been also touring some of the camps there, and they just told her this is an allergy or an insect bite or it’s a psychological reaction from visiting these camps. So, you know, just being dismissed, and it sounded absolutely horrible. But she certainly had the power and the commitment to do something about it and to turn it around.
Ellin Bessner: It’s a privilege to learn about all these really, really important community leaders that you were so lucky to learn more about yourself and then write for us, and then bring it to the Honourable Menschen. Thanks so much to Heather and to you, Lila, for joining us for the first time on Honourable Menschen. Maybe, another time to come back?
Lila Sarick: Thank you so much.
Heather Ringel: Thank you.
Show Notes
Credits
- Host and writer: Ellin Bessner (@ebessner)
- Production team: Zachary Kauffman (producer), Michael Fraiman (executive producer)
- Music: Dov Beck-Levine
Support our show
- Subscribe to The CJN newsletter
- Donate to The CJN (+ get a charitable tax receipt)
- Subscribe to The CJN Daily (Not sure how? Click here)
